


Mother

by TheIntelligentHufflepuff



Series: Platonic Ideals (non-romantic Anne with an E fic) [2]
Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Female Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Identity, Platonic Soulmates, Teen Angst, but sometimes it be like that, discussion about racism, strong independent young women, though the homoerotic undertones are real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 10:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20852009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIntelligentHufflepuff/pseuds/TheIntelligentHufflepuff
Summary: Spoilers for the infamous Season 3, Episode 2****A few paces lapsed in silence. Then, with the weight of a murder confession, Anne admitted:"Marilla told me she loved me this morning."ORA healing conversation between Anne and Diana to parallel the one between Anne and Cole, featuring the complications of mother-daughter relationships and a more developed exploration of the maelstrom of factors contributing to Anne's identity crisis.





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

> The title isn't actually as uncreative as it might seem, bc 'mother' was also used to mean hysteria or madness in middle/ early modern English! 
> 
> I was thinking about writing something fluffier but then episode 2 stormed in and ruined/made my Monday (I'm watching through a VPN). I wrote this half on the bus today (Tuesday) so temper your expectations, but even so I hope this plugs a gap for you, the reader, too!

"Do you ever feel like you could just hate your mother, Diana?" Anne asked that Monday, out of the blue. 

Diana startled, but Anne seemed for all the world unaffected by what would ordinarily be a passionate enquiry. Clearly, something was wrong with Anne- and if she hadn't been raised better, Diana would bet her best bow that Anne's trip to the asylum was the cause. 

Cautiously, Diana followed Anne's gaze to the frozen river they walked along, and replied. 

"Mother often vexes me to no end. She demands I dedicate my life to becoming a wife, like her, and doesn't listen when I say that I yearn for my own accomplishments first." 

Anne nodded absently; they'd had similar discussions before. 

"I often feel like I could never like anyone less than her, but-" Diana sidestepped over to Anne, sombrely offering her arm like a proper gentleman "I love her anyway." 

Exhaling deeply, Anne took Diana's arm. Her gloved hand hung limply against the felt of Diana's coat sleeve. 

A few paces lapsed in silence. Then, with the weight of a murder confession, Anne admitted: 

"Marilla told me she loved me this morning." 

"Really?" Diana gasped, grinning broadly despite herself "That's wonderful!" 

She knew Anne often pined for confirmation that the Cuthberts really cared. 

"Yes." Anne agreed dully "It would be, it would be fan- It would be, if only she hadn't said so as an excuse to keep me under house arrest." 

"House arrest?" Diana echoed, hand flying unconsciously to her chest. 

Anne nodded gravely, rockpool eyes far away "She found out about my article on the Mi'kmaq. She said they might have killed me. She called them  _ savages _ , Diana!" 

"Oh...my." 

Suddenly, Anne's scrutinising gaze was fixed on her "You don't seem awfully surprised, Diana." 

Diana winced "I am. Or at least, I'm surprised  _ Marilla  _ of all people would buy into such nonsense. But I have to say, I've heard people call them worse." 

"Your parents?" 

"No." Diana was relieved to reply "But acquaintances." 

Tossing her fiery hair, Anne scoffed in disgust. A little light bled back into her eyes, an impassioned blush just barely touching her pale cheeks. 

"Well, they're not. They're anything  _ but  _ savages. You should  _ see  _ the way they look at the world, Diana, the way everything meshes together, it's…elegance incarnate. And their  _ craft _ , it's  _ beautiful.  _ And Ka'kwet is the sweetest girl, and her siblings are absolutely adorable. Marilla couldn't be more wrong, she absolutely couldn't." 

Diana nodded emphatically in agreement. Then, when it seemed like Anne was on the brink of drifting into her own world again, she summarised "So that's why you think you might hate Marilla? Her prejudice?" 

Anne pulled an unflattering face.

"Yes, and no. It's more than that. It's the way she's been acting recently, the way she's been treating me like-"

Diana leant closer to dodge a low hanging bough. 

"Like a child?" 

"Like I was never an orphan! Like I never grew up alone! Like I'm a naive little lady who has no grasp on the ways of the world!" 

Diana's eyebrows lifted of their own accord. With all the liberties Marilla allowed Anne to take- riding like a man, running through the fields alone, meeting with her male friends unchaperoned- Diana had thought Anne had, in some ways, a fairly easy run of it. 

"What's brought this on?" She marvelled, trying desperately not to sound like her mother as she did so. 

“It’s rather a long story.” Anne hedged. 

“I always have time for a story.” 

Sighing deeply, Anne nodded and explained Marilla's comments about looking like an urchin, her insistence Anne plaster herself to Gilbert's side, the tired advice she reiterated despite the fact that Anne already knew it all…

"And worst of all he went  _ along  _ with it!" Anne sputtered, voice fraught with indignation and, underneath it all, deep disappointment "He said he ‘didn't mind’ escorting me. Well, I bet he loved it! A petty little power trip." 

"Anne!" Diana scolded gently "That's uncharitable." 

"I know." Anne deflated "And I was unkind to him then, too. I apologised, but the damage is done." 

"Truces are harder than I thought." She added under her breath. Diana supposed she wasn't meant to hear it. 

Aware of the dropping temperature, Diana drew her scarf more tightly to her neck. They'd reached a dell nearby to where their clubhouse had formerly sat; Anne came to a standstill, gazing wistfully in its direction. Diana rested her head on her shoulder, drawing soft warmth against the hard chill of the forest. 

"Maturity is hard." Anne mused, seeming calmer but more morose "I wish I was a girl again, paying no attention to the world outside my head. Thinking Marilla was the Lord's sternest angel. Before she told me she loved me to win an argument. Before-" she sniffled "Before I was made aware of the possibility that my birth parents may not have loved me at all." 

Reluctantly, Diana pulled back to gaze hard at Anne's fine features. She was still as a statue, but for a slight tremor that spoke as loudly as any of Ruby's hysterics. 

It didn't take a genius to put two and two together. 

"You found something. Something bad." 

Lips tight, Anne nodded. Momentarily, Diana was convinced that that was the end of it. Then, the damn broke and words tumbled out of Anne in a torrent once more. 

"It's tormenting me, Diana.  _ Tormenting  _ me. I thought I'd go to the orphanage and find closure, but all I found was proof of how much of a  _ child  _ I was. One of my old bullies was still there and she near called me a whore, but I wasn't even  _ angry  _ because I realised we were all pretending.  _ All _ of us. And-" Anne broke off, heaving in ragged sobs.

Diana wrapped her up, squeezing tightly, and trod cautiously backwards until they were nestled against the wide trunk of an oak tree. Once she’d regained her breath, Anne continued. 

"I had this  _ fiction  _ that my parents loved me and were watching over me. I wrote all these stories to cope. All because I couldn't face being who I was! But I  _ am  _ her. I  _ am  _ an orphan, even if my birth parents dumped me off like trash instead of dying. And Marilla might think she loves me, but she  _ doesn't,  _ nobody loves the...the  _ lunatic  _ I really am, they love the cleaned-up, buttoned-in, scarecrow of me that I am. And I  _ know  _ me.  _ No-one else knows me _ . Not even Cole! Not even you! And if I'm the only one who knows me, and  _ I  _ don’t love me, how can anyone else, Diana? How?” 

“I- I-” Diana stuttered, tears pricking at her own eyes. 

It was awful. Everything Anne was saying was awful, and if she breathed a word of it around Diana’s mother she’d box her ears. But Diana wasn’t her mother- though she’d had her doubts in the past, she was never more sure of that fact than right then. Taking a deep breath, Diana summoned up the elegant ghost of Prince Wisteria and addressed the trembling wreck of a best friend in her arms. 

“Anne, I love you. I do. Aren’t you always saying that we’re kindred spirits? It’s true. I may not know everything about you, but I know your soul. And your soul woke mine, woke me to every possibility I didn’t know I wanted but would have missed if you hadn’t inspired me to know myself, too.” 

Weakly, Anne shook her head against Diana’s chest “You might think you love me for what I’ve done for you, but if I’d never done any of that you wouldn’t have thought twice about me.” 

“I would.” Diana vowed “I wouldn’t have to know you at all to see how vibrant you are. How brilliant. How determined.” 

“That’s not me!” Anne sobbed “Frenetic, maybe. Smart-ish. Stubborn.” 

“Those too, maybe.” Diana conceded, running a hand through Anne’s hair the way she did on the rare occasion when Minnie May came to her for comfort “But that doesn’t make you a bad person. And even your flaws, like the way you put your foot in it, make you interesting.” 

“I wouldn’t put it that way.” 

Diana smiled quietly. That was more like Anne. 

“Look, what I’m trying to say, Anne, is that I might not know you the way you know yourself, but I know you  _ enough.  _ And I know that anything else you find out about yourself, if you choose to share it with me, will only make me love you more.” 

Slowly, Anne pulled back. For a moment, she simply studied Diana with red, puffy eyes. Then, she nodded. 

“Thank you, Diana. I only wish I could fully believe you, but you helped.” 

“Always.” Diana promised, letting her hands drop to encircle Anne’s “But what are you going to do about Marilla?” 

Anne’s eyebrows flicked up, wry “I don’t know. I’ll see what she does, first. I feel so betrayed, but as for the other thing...I can’t be so sore about a slip of the tongue, can I?”

“A slip of the truth,” Diana corrected “I’m certain.” 

“Mathew said so too.” Anne confirmed, giving Diana’s hands a firm squeeze. 

“Good.” 

Driven by some unspoken consensus, the pair began walking again. They only had a little way to go before they reached the point at which their paths split; when they got there, the sun was just starting to slip under the horizon. 

As she turned to leave, Diana caught Anne’s sleeve. 

“And Anne? I hope that you find your parents loved you. But most of all, I hope you find a way to love yourself as much as we love you.” 

“I love you, too.” Anne squeaked, face flushed but eyes determined. 

Heart still aching for her friend, but nevertheless warmed, Diana drew Anne into one last hug and left. 

She was sure, in time, that they’d be fine. They were their mothers’ daughters, but so much more. 


End file.
